Tag Archives: hypotonia

I first met Megan Miceli when she was 6 months old. She was a beautiful little girl with blond hair and blue eyes and an infectious smile that reached from ear to ear. But when her parents noticed that Megan wasn’t hitting milestones at the rate her siblings had, they grew concerned and brought her to Kennedy Krieger.

With weekly physical therapy sessions and her mother diligently working with Megan at home, she slowly began making strides in her motor skills. In the meantime, an extensive medical workup revealed she had hypotonia and a gene microdeletion, which was the root of her medical problems. The gene deletion is so rare that there have only been six reported cases since 2009. In addition she was also recently diagnosed with episodic hemiplegia, another disorder that affects 1 in 1 million people. Without warning, Megan can experience an attack of paralysis on the left side of her body multiple times per week, each lasting between 5 and 20 minutes.